[quote]Tiax Rules All wrote...
nope
http://www.eurogamer...oice-simplified[/quote]
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]Brockololly wrote...
The whole tracking of dialogue choices sounds interesting- I just hope that just because maybe you choose a sarcastic choice a bunch early on that doesn't mean that maybe an angry choice or something gets locked off later on.[/quote]
Nope. You can "switch" your dominant personality if you pick different responses enough. Tracking personality affects those times when a line is forced (so the line used might use your dominant tone) or when you're selecting a choice that isn't reflective of tone ("I'll help you" isn't reflective of tone-- so in that case you're not adding to your personality tracking but the response you see could vary according to your dominant personality. In that case a roguish player might see "Sure, why not? It's not like I had anything else to do.")
I say "might" and "could" because we don't use dominant personality in every situation-- sometimes a neutral tone will do just fine, but this is our way of allowing the player to choose the tone they favor and inject some personality into the PC without having a whole list of options every time you need to make a choice.
Having a dominant tone also comes up in other situations, but we'll get to that.[/quote]
And:
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]Brockololly wrote...
Sounds interesting- is there some metric to tell what your "dominant tone" is? Or would that be too much like paragon/renegade points?
[/quote]
A metric? You mean like an on-screen "personality meter"? No-- tracking personality choices occurs under the hood, so to speak.[/quote]
Also:
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]Oblivious wrote...
Not that worried about the tone since I'm sure I won't be the only smartass their first 5 playthroughs but I am curious as to how the tone translates into other responses. For example, if a good character takes a response that has them threaten someone and cut off a limb would the character do it all in a nice, soothing manner? Or would he shout it like a bad character would usually do? Or, and this is the most important one, if a smartass were to select that option would he make a joke and "laugh out loud"?[/quote]
What you'd need to understand is there are two types of player responses that you're being asked for: one is the "personality choice" -- picture those times in Origins where you're not really making a story decision (take/refuse a quest, decide which path in a quest to follow, etc.) but simply selecting how you say something. In Origins we called that flavor and they didn't affect anything. Here we track it and have it affect the other responses-- the "action choice". If you're taking/refusing a quest or deciding on a path, we're not generally assigning a tone to that response. We offer you options (and possibly different motivations for those options) but how you say them will depend on the personality choices you've been picking. Not all the time, of course, but often enough that you'll notice.
So you may be talking to someone where your personality choices are threaten/negotiate/joke... but as soon as you're offered an action choice it isn't with a tone. The action choice might, I suppose, be to threaten them if that leads to an action-- and thus you could indeed threaten them in a joking manner, yes.
Clear as mud, I'm sure. The icons are present on lines to offer some context to the player, as otherwise paraphrases could lead to some surprises, but as I said before the idea is to allow the player to craft her own personality.
[/quote]
Continuing with:
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]Brockololly wrote...
The personality tracking thing sounds interesting, but I'm somewhat worried it may railroad you into playing as a certain type of character. Like if my guy is sarcastic most of the time but say there is a certain instance he doesn't want to jokingly threaten somebody, but actually slam some heads, that angry action wouldn't be available? I guess it comes down to the devs determining the significance of the scene as to when its ok for the personality to dictate things versus when the full range of options should be open.[/quote]
Right. Whenever you're presented personality options, you're always going to get them all. It's when you get the action options that you will see the personality pop up-- but even then, we're going to take the situation into account. If something sad just happened we're not going to have you cracking wise (as a for instance). If there's a question in our heads of motivation (as in it's not clear from the paraphrase why the player is taking an action, in situations where the motivation could be really different even if the action is the same) then we'll list those action options separately.
Ultimately, though, it's down to the writing. Trust us?

[/quote]
Then:
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]Wolverfrog wrote...
Dominant personality? You mean I can't role-play as a schizophrenic this time around?
Damn you Bioware![/quote]
I assume you're joking, but I'll just add that you can be as much a schizophrenic as you like-- when the personality choices come up you can veer from one to the other as much as you like.

The idea behind the entire thing is that while it's okay for Sheperd to have a single personality (Sheperd is, after all, a soldier as much as anything else) we figured giving players more options for Dragon Age was appropriate.[/quote]
And finally:
[quote]David Gaider wrote...
[quote]term8 wrote...
All of Mr.Gaider's posts on this thread have me really really excited about the new dialog system. the pc voice actors must have had to record a record number of lines for this game.[/quote]
Sweet Jesus, you have no idea.[/quote]